The Survivor and his Safe Place

by Rebecca James

  “I hope so,” I said, “because he’s kind of pathetic looking right now.”

  “He’s the first snowman I ever built,” Axel said, and I looked at him, surprised.

  “Really?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t have anyone to build one with.”

  I didn’t ask why his grandfather didn’t build one with him because I’d gotten the feeling Axel’s hadn’t been a loving childhood. I suddenly wished there’d been more snow so we could’ve built a better snowman.

  “My brother and I built at least one every winter,” I found myself saying. “CJ was much better at rolling out symmetrical balls than I was. He always made me to do the head and then would pack on more snow afterward to make it look better.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “One time we didn’t have any carrots and CJ went rummaging in my parents’ closet for something to make a nose. Hours later, when my mother saw the snowman, she shrieked so loudly, we all came running. I didn’t realize until years later CJ had used her vibrator for the nose.”

  “Oh my God.” Axel laughed with me. After a moment, I sobered.

  “I can’t believe I just had a memory about my family that didn’t make me sad,” I said, and Axel wrapped his arms around me, holding me for a long time until Duke began chasing a squirrel, and we had to go after him.

  Back inside the house, I warmed up the Thanksgiving leftovers Isaac had sent with us while Axel built a fire in the fireplace. We sat on the rug in front of the couch, our legs stretched out in front of us, and ate.

  “You’ve got on reindeer socks,” I said, touching one with my foot. “I love that about you. You’re so big and scary-looking, but you wear funny socks.”

  Axel set his empty bowl on the floor and turned to me. “I don’t want you to ever be scared of me, Caleb.”

  I swallowed and shook my head slowly. “I’m not. Not anymore.”

  He took my bowl from me and set it aside before pulling me onto his lap. “I like it that I’m your safe place now,” he said into my hair. He rubbed under my shirt with a roughened hand warmed by the fire.

  “You really are,” I said.

  Axel was quiet a moment, then said, “Sometimes I gotta do stuff for the safety of the club. And sometimes I have to do stuff for loyalty sake.”

  When I turned to look at his face, he said, “I don’t mean murder. But violent stuff.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I leaned my head on his shoulder.

  “I don’t want you thinking less of me for it,” Axel said.

  I pulled his hand to my mouth and kissed each finger in turn.

  “I won’t,” I said. Frankly, if I hadn’t seen Axel tear into Dante that time, I didn’t think I could even imagine him being violent. I knew he looked frightening, but I didn’t see him as a threat anymore.

  “Will you talk about it in therapy?” Axel asked, and I stiffened. Uh, oh.

  “Talk about what?” I hedged.

  “If you ever have conflicting thoughts about me. Will you talk to your therapist if you do? I figure you won’t want to tell me.”

  I cleared my throat and started to climb off Axel’s lap, but he held me in place.

  “Caleb?”

  I didn’t want him to think my discomfort was about him, so I took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes. “I quit therapy.”

  He looked shocked.

  “When? Why?”

  “A few weeks ago. I didn’t need it anymore.”

  Axel started to say something, but I forged ahead.

  “All I did was relive that night over and over again. I don’t need to do it anymore.”

  Axel watched my face, and I looked back at him stubbornly.

  “Would you tell me about it?” he surprised me by asking. “That night, I mean.”

  I hesitated.

  “Nevermind. I shouldn’t have asked,” he said.

  “No, it’s okay. I can tell you.” I turned so my back rested against his front and looked into the fire. Duke snored on the couch on level with my ear.

  “It was New Year’s Eve,” I began. Axel ran his hands down my arms and settled them on my thighs.

  I pressed my lips together. I could do this. I’d done it many times for Dana, and each retelling had gotten easier. I’d never repeated the story to anyone else, other than the police, but I could do it for Axel. I could prove to him I was okay.

  “The tree was still up.” I cleared my throat. Axel squeezed my thigh but remained silent. I could feel his heart beating steadily against my back and found it soothing.

  “CJ’s room was downstairs. Mine was upstairs and so was my parents’. I’d gone to bed early for some reason. I don’t remember why.” I took in a breath and let it out again. “I woke up. I don’t know why. Maybe I had to go to the bathroom, or maybe I heard a noise. When I got to the hall, I heard a thump. I looked over the banister and saw him—Terrance Jefferson—in the living room.” The words came out methodically and without emotion. “H-he was big, with tattoos on his bald head.”

  “Like I have,” Axel said. I nodded against his shoulder.

  I was getting to the bad part, the part hardest to voice, but I forged ahead, not lingering on details like Dana had made me do.

  “I heard screams. It was my brother. Horrible screams.” I was surprised at how normal I sounded. Like I was reciting a grocery list or something equally mundane rather than the most horrific moments of my life.

  “I ran to my parents’ room, but neither of them was in there, and I remember wondering why they weren’t helping my brother.”

  The fire crackled and popped, flames dancing before my eyes. Duke made a huffing noise in his sleep, and I wondered what dogs dreamed about.

  I felt my body stiffening, although I fought it. “When I went back to the banister, I saw the blood. It must have been there before, but I only remember looking at Jefferson.”

  Axel made a soft sound behind me.

  “Dark pools of it on the hardwood floor that my mom was always telling us we couldn’t get wet. And blood on the walls, too. Long, dark streaks of blood. I remember there was a splash on a picture too.” I relaxed into Axel’s embrace, welcoming the numbness seeping into me. I’d disengaged.

  Axel’s arms tightened around me. His heartbeat had become a quick staccato against my back.

  “What did you do?” he asked when I didn’t say anything else for a while.

  “I hid in my closet.” Axel probably knew that. The newspapers had noted that’s where the police had found me. “I called 911. I remember whispering into the phone, afraid he’d hear me. I knew he’d come upstairs eventually.”

  Axel petted my hair, murmured something in my ear before pressing a kiss to it. This part in the story was as far as I’d ever gotten with Dana. I’d said I’d called for help in the closet and had stayed there until the police got me out. But I’d never told her what I was about to tell Axel.

  “I heard him on the stairs,” I said. “He stomped up them, kinda fast. I steeled myself when I heard him pause, listening, and I suddenly thought—my bed’s unmade. If he sees it, he’ll know someone else is in the house. In that moment, I thought I was going to die. But he walked toward my parents’ room.”

  “Oh, my God,” Axel whispered.

  I swallowed, throat dry, remembering vividly how I’d crouched, shaking, in the closet, knowing I had to do something before he came in my room.

  “I slowly crawled out of the closet, stopping every few seconds to listen. I heard Jefferson going through the drawers in my parents’ room. Every time he stopped making noise, I froze. When I finally got to the bed, I slowly got to my feet and pulled up the sheet and bedspread as quietly as I could. It felt like a dream—one where I couldn’t get the wrinkles out of the bedspread no matter hard I tried. I heard the hangers scraping in my parents’ closet, which was on the other side of the wall from the head of my bed. I desperately tried to make things look untouched, hoping he’d think whoever usually slept there wasn’t at home. W
hen I’d done the best I could do, I carefully moved back to the closet and lowered myself to the corner again. I’d muted my phone, and I remember exactly the way it felt in my hand. It was still connected to 911.”

  “What happened then?” Axel asked.

  A log toppled over in the grate, making the fire hiss. I covered Axel’s hand with my own, lacing my fingers between his.

  “I heard him in the hallway. Then in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Then in the doorway to my room.” My heart hammered in my chest, almost as hard as it had back then. “I remember wondering if the police would use sirens. I didn’t hear any. It seemed like it was taking them forever, but I found out later it was only eight minutes. They crashed in the front door when Jefferson was going through my drawers. He didn’t have a gun, just a-a knife.” I squeezed shut my eyes. “They got him easily, then found me in the closet.”

  A tear slid down my cheek. Axel wiped it away with his shirttail, then held me while I cried quietly.

  “I never went back there,” I choked out. “Someone got my stuff for me. I couldn’t go back.”

  “Shh.” Axel rocked me back and forth, soothing me. “You were so brave, Caleb.”

  I shook my head vehemently. “No, I wasn’t. I didn’t do anything. Just hid. I didn’t even run downstairs and try to escape. I couldn’t go down there. When the police took me out of the house, one officer told me not to look, but I did. I had to—I kept thinking how I’d never see them again. I wish I hadn’t now. It’s all I see when I close my eyes at night. I should have done something to help them.”

  “What could you have done?”

  “I could have helped my brother!” I yelled, surprising myself. I hadn’t known the anger was there, just underneath the surface, waiting. Duke jerked awake on the couch and barked. “I should have gone down and helped him. I might have saved him.” I crawled out of Axel’s lap and sat a foot away on the rug, rocking forward and back, arms wrapped around myself. “I should have helped CJ. Jefferson just had a knife. I could have hit him over the head or something.” I began to sob, my entire body shuddering under the weight of my guilt. “But I just hid like a…like a fucking coward.”

  Axel pulled me back into his lap easily, as though I weighed nothing at all.

  “He would have killed you too.” His voice rumbled in my ear. “You did the right thing. You were smart to remake your bed. Smart and brave, Caleb.”

  I held onto him and continued crying, harder than I ever had in Dana’s office, and said the words I hadn’t said once since the home invasion.

  “I miss them. He took them from me. I want my family back, Axel. I want them back. He had no right to take them from me.”

  I suddenly realized Axel was crying too.

  “I wish I could take all the pain away,” he said, kissing me over and over on my face and neck and hands.

  “I wish you could too.” I closed my eyes and cried until I couldn’t anymore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Axel

  Caleb and I spent the holidays quietly. After what he’d told me, I couldn’t blame him for not feeling particularly festive at that time of year. He said it was getting better though.

  Since the night he’d opened up to me about exactly what had happened during the invasion of his home, Caleb seemed lighter. I’d tried to talk to him about going back to therapy because I felt he’d left it too soon, but he was adamant that he didn’t need it. And he was getting better—I could see his progress. We went out more, and although withdrawn, Caleb managed well in public—a little better every time we went somewhere.

  I’d realized something. The first time Caleb had freaked when seeing me was at Christmastime when I’d had a sack full of packages for the animals. And then Foghorn had made some wisecrack, and I’d wrestled him to the ground. It bothered me that I’d made things so much worse that very first day, even though there had been no way I could have known. I wondered if circumstances had been different we might have gotten together sooner.

  Kilbourne had left town for the holidays, so I’d been saved from having to do anything about him for the time being. The guys had Mick and his sister over for Christmas, and the day after, the siblings came to the party at Swish and Dante’s.

  “Nice to meet you,” Caleb said to Mick and Haylee when Hung introduced them. Cupcake pulled Haylee away to show her something, and Caleb continued to Mick, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Mick looked past Caleb at me, his eyes plainly asking me if Caleb knew everything, and I shook my head. I’d actually forgotten Mick and I had fucked. I didn’t see any reason to tell Caleb about it now.

  But then Hung opened his big mouth.

  “Well, you two have something in common.”

  I wanted to punch him.

  “What?” Caleb asked, innocently.

  “We both like chess,” Mick rushed to say.

  Caleb frowned. “I don’t play chess.”

  I wrapped my arm around Caleb’s shoulders.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said, as thankfully, Isaac called us to the buffet table to eat.

  Later that night, back at the shelter in bed after sharing the log of divinity Isaac had sent us home with, Caleb asked what Hung had meant about he and Mick having something in common. I didn’t want to keep anything from him, so I kissed him deeply, never tiring of the taste of him or the feel of his tongue against mine, and settled us against the pillows.

  “I met Mick a while back, before you and me started dating. We had sex. It was quick and dirty. We didn’t even kiss. That’s what Hung was referring to when he said you two had something in common. He was being a dick.”

  Caleb studied my face in the dim room. He didn’t need to turn on the night light anymore, but we usually left the curtains open so the moon shone in.

  “Oh.” I couldn’t tell if Caleb was upset. “Where?”

  I raised my brows. “Where? Uh, in a parking lot. Over my bike.”

  Caleb frowned. “Really? Is that possible?”

  “I just wanted you to know. I wasn’t trying to keep it from you. I just never thought about it again. Now, Mick—he was trying to keep it from you by bringing up chess.” I shook my head. “He just didn’t want things to get awkward at the party.”

  Caleb was staring off into space.

  “Are you mad?” I finally asked, unable to bear the silence. There wasn’t anything I could do about having slept with Mick before Caleb and I had become a couple, but I didn’t want Caleb to be upset about it.

  “Huh?” Caleb looked at me. “What? No. Not unless you secretly still want him or something.”

  “Of course I don’t,” I said.

  “Was it good? Doing it over your bike, I mean. ‘Cause it sounds really hot.”

  I chuckle, so relieved he wasn’t angry. “I guess so, yeah. Wasn’t the first time I’d done it that way.”

  “And you were outside?”

  “Outside a club, off in a dark corner of the parking lot.”

  “Can we try it sometime?” Caleb asked. “I mean, over your bike, not in a parking lot.”

  I couldn’t help the grin that spread over my face. “Sure, if you want. I’m up for anything you want to try.”

  Caleb gave me the mischievous smile that always got me hard. “Really? Because there are a lot of things I want to try.”

  “Do you, now?” I tugged him so he was lying on top of me, our naked bodies pressed together. I kissed him hungrily then smiled as he moved downward on the bed to take me into his mouth. I watched him bob up and down a minute, my balls tingling, before placing my hands on his head and gently pushing down until he choked, then letting go. Caleb raised his head, saliva running out of his mouth and down my dick. He smiled at me, letting me know how hot he’d thought that had been, then went back to sucking. The next time I did it, I held him longer. Again, Caleb choked and dripped all over me. I could see he was hard. My Caleb was a kinky little fucker. After a few more minutes, I pulled him up and into a kiss. When he
sat on my dick with only his saliva as lube, I almost bit my tongue in half.

  “Holy shit,” I said on a gasp as Caleb bottomed out. If it hurt him, he didn’t show it. The fucking session we had after that would go down in the books as one of our hottest yet.

  After, we lay in each other’s arms, as we did most nights. Realizing I was at the shelter more often than I was at the clubhouse, I thought maybe I should move in. Was it too soon? Looking at Caleb’s eyes drifting shut, my heart clenched in my chest. I only knew I always wanted to be where he was.

  ****

  It was Caleb’s idea to have a party on New Year’s Eve. Not a big party, of course, but all of our friends.

  “It’s not like we’d actually been celebrating New Year’s when it happened,” Caleb told me when I objected that it might not be the best night to have a party for the first time. “I just don’t want to be thinking about it, you know? This will keep me busy.”

  “If you’re sure,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  We’d fucked on my bike outside the shelter on an unusually warm night. Nobody could see from the house, but being outside had made it feel dirty, and that seemed to be what Caleb liked about it. That, and having his pants down while leaning over my Harley and getting fucked.

  I had to admit, it had been pretty damned hot, way hotter than it had been with Mick.

  “I invited Hugh, and he’s bringing a date,” Caleb told me as we hung streamers around the downstairs rooms of the shelter.

  “Are you sure this place is big enough for everyone?” I asked.

  “It is with the tent out back.” He’d rented outdoor heaters so people could sit outside. “I want this to be special. I’m happy for the first time in a long time and want to celebrate.”

  “Okay, baby. Anything you want.” I finished hanging my streamer. “This doesn’t look right.” The piece of crepe paper sagged.

  “You need to twist it, like this.” Caleb showed me with a fresh streamer. I had to admit that it looked better than my droopy attempt. I redid mine. “This still doesn’t look as good as yours,” I grumbled.